Binding The Youth Together

One of the best methods to save money these days is to make your house totally connected – meaning installing electronic connectivity to all of your major appliances, doors, windows, blinds, and other things. Imagine being able to leave the heat off all day, but turn it on an hour before you plan to return home? Or to open the blinds on a rainy day if the sun comes out in order to warm your home more naturally?

These types of things are becoming more and more commonplace, and the increased connectivity between your home and devices like your computer and your smartphone means that you have so much more control over the elements of your house.

One of the most popular up and coming devices is the Nest thermostat. This thermostat will “learn” your daily habits, but is also fully controllable through your smartphone. It can help you dramatically reduce your home energy costs. Imagine you set your thermostat to turn up the heat before you normally return home at 5:30. But your co-workers invite you out for happy hour and you don’t end up coming home until about 8pm. You could cut a couple hours of heating an empty home by manually controlling your thermostat from your smartphone. It’s incredibly easy, and the incremental energy savings adds up quite a bit over the course of a year.

There is also a slew of energy calculation apps that help you to estimate how much energy you are using and where you can cut costs. These apps are free or low cost, and can help you to develop strategies for improving your energy consumption.

If you’re using a computer and smartphone to save energy, then it’s also important to ensure that your computer is protected from malware and viruses. There are a number of safe and good programs out there that can help you to do this without any sort of hassle. Any computer connected to the internet or a wifi connection is vulnerable to attacks. And if you’re using apps and computers to help you with certain elements of your home such as locking and unlocking your doors, it is possible that the app could get hacked if malware gets on your computer.

Speaking of computers, did you know that a laptop computer will use much, much less energy than a desktop computer? Consider switching over if you’re buying a new computer. These days more and more computers are just becoming tablets or very small anyway. The days of big huge tower computers are largely over, and they are reserved for use with higher intensity applications such as video editing and advanced computation that requires more space and cooling. But as computers get more and more advanced, these things will be a thing of the past as well.

All in all there are many things that you can do in order to electronically control what goes on in your home so that you can save energy. Stay tuned to this blog for more tips and new apps.

There are many things that define the term eco friendly. The most common of these are reduced energy consumption and a lower carbon footprint. However, selecting the best options for your home can be a little tough. The first step in this process is to use your home computer and the Internet to discover exactly what is available and how effective it may be. One of the simplest options is to replace your appliances with modern, efficient versions. Surprisingly, this can even include your personal computer. Older computers require a lot of power to operate, but modern computers have become very energy efficient and are steadily improving. Plus, today’s computers provide many conveniences that older models don’t have.

One of the best options for saving energy and reducing carbon output can actually improve the comfort level of your home environment. This is the use of heat pumps. A heat pump is a simple system that transfers collected heat from one area to another. There are two basic types. The first is the air source heat pump. This is most commonly used for cooling homes because it takes heat from the air and transfers it to another location. The alternative is the ground source heat pump. These systems can work by transferring heat stored in the ground or collecting heat from inside the home. This makes them an excellent option for both heating and cooling. Plus, ground source heat pumps can be used in more areas than air source systems.

Other sources of home heating can save money as well. For instance, under floor heating systems can provide excellent warmth while using less energy than most heating units. Because heat rises they can actually warm a whole room in a very short time. These heating system typically rely on condensing boilers to supply warm water through a series of pipes. This allows them to spread the heat around the room and recirculate the water. Under floor heating also provides another benefit, they don’t require an additional heat source in the room which reduces excess clutter in small areas such as bathrooms. This can be significant with homes that use radiators for heating.

Another thing that you can do in order to reduce energy expenditure is to make small habits for energy savings. For example – turning off your computer when you’re not using it can save quite a bit of money. I know many people who need to turn off their computers because they don’t like how long it takes them to either turn them off or turn them on. It’s true, some computers will get so slow that it takes up to 5 minutes to boot up. This can be solved by simply cleaning out the computer and removing excess and unnecessary programs. I strongly suggest to people that they look into getting themselves a program such as RegCure or Spyhunter or similar. These programs can be immensely helpful. Check out a computer blog or two, such as No More Sad Computer or Your PC Helpers in order to see just what program you might need for your own personal situation. Turning off the computer could add up to save you quite a bit of money, and it’s way more eco-friendly.